Lymphoedema
Guidance and resources for systems and all lymphoedema services to deliver integrated, personalised care for people affected by cancer.
TCST and the London Lymphoedema Community of Practice refreshed system level guidance for Lymphoedema in 2020. The guidance supports Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) to commission and deliver high quality personalised care for all people living with lymphoedema and those who are at risk of developing lymphoedema as a consequence of their cancer and its treatment.
Lymphoedema – the case for change
Since the publication of TCST’s original guidance in 2016, there has been an increase in the lymphoedema workforce in north east, south east and south west London. In contrast, there has been a decrease in staffing in north central and north west London, with the latter now being identified as a top priority for the development of lymphoedema services.
The revised guidance:
- provides a high-level overview of lymphoedema and the key strategic challenges;
- identifies how services are currently commissioned across London, identifying the gaps in services and workforce and outlines where improvements are needed;
- clearly sets out what a good service looks like, how it can be evaluated and what it could achieve in practice;
- identifies the key education and training needs for the wider workforce and how these can be addressed;
- outlines how the Guidance should be implemented and evaluated.
Guidance and resources
- TCST Commissioning Guidance for Lymphoedema Services for Adults Living with and Beyond Cancer (2020)
- Webinar to launch the guidance – On Tuesday 3 November 2020, the pan London guidance was launched at our virtual event “Lymphoedema Guidance for adults living with and beyond cancer”. The slides can be downloaded here.
- TCST Mapping of the specialist services in London and West Essex (2020)
- TCST Minimum Dataset for Lymphoedema Services (2020) – This spreadsheet is designed to help you collect a minimum dataset to describe the types of patients attending your lymphoedema clinic and demonstrate workload and capacity. The drop down menus ensure that the data you collect will be comparable with that collected by other services using this tool. Please ensure that you add text wherever you select the ‘other’ option. Also, there is a comments box at the end of the row to capture any other information you wish to include.
Acknowledgement: This MDS spreadsheet has been adapted from the work done by Kay Morris, Ireland and the BLS MDS form.
- TCST Lymphoedema Service Specification (2020)
- TCST Template business case – lymphoedema services (2017)
- TCST Lymphoedema Community of Practice Report (2020)
- London Lymphoedema Community of Practice, led by NEL Cancer Alliance (from April 2020)
Conferences, awards and publications
TCST’s lymphoedema guidance has been shared across the UK and was adapted by the National Lymphoedema Partnership for their national commissioning guidance. The team has presented at conferences, received a highly commended award from the Healthcare Transformation Awards and has published a peer reviewed journal article. These are shown below:
- Robb KA and Price L (2018), “Using guidance to improve lymphoedema services for people living with and beyond cancer”, Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer, Vienna, Austria
- Robb KA and Price L (2017), “Commissioning lymphoedema services for people living with and beyond cancer in London”, British Journal of Community Nursing, Vol 2, No Sup5, p28-32, UK
- 2018 Healthcare Transformation Awards Finalist and Highly Commended: Innovation in Improving Outcomes and Reducing Variation